Happily Ever After: Coal and the Palmer Family

Once upon a time…there was a dog you couldn’t begin to describe with words like ‘active’ or ‘hyper.’ Coal, a lab mix, is the type of dog who will climb up a tree trunk after a squirrel, says owner Linda Palmer. In fact, he’s on a two-year probation after being accused of incessant barking—although Palmer says the charges were exaggerated.

Guilty or not, perhaps Coal is so excitable because he has a lot of catching up to do. When Palmer found him at the Humane Society of Missouri in Chesterfield, Coal was near the end of a one-year recovery. “I also have a full-bred Lab and I was taking him to the Humane Society because he had allergies; and every time I took him, I kept seeing this black dog they were walking who had casts on all four of his legs,” she says. “They said he had been found on Highway 40. Someone had just left him on the highway, where a car hit him; and a young boy had carried him in.”

Since dogs aren’t put up for adoption until they’re 100 percent healthy, Palmer asked to be called when Coal was ready for adoption. “We were able to adopt him. But after we had him for one week, he came barging down the steps and hit a glass platter,” she adds. The platter was shattered and Coal was cut, severing his Achilles tendon, which required surgery and eight more weeks of confinement. “He’d been in a cage for a year healing, and he had one week of freedom and then he was back in the cage.”

So now Coal is making up for lost time, and he’s a great addition to the family, Palmer says. Her husband Mark, and kids Courtney, Collin and Corrinne, along with their Lab, Tex, have all taken to him. “The only thing I regret looking back is with the children, it would have been an asset to have a dog when they were younger. You can’t believe how attached you get to them.”